12 June 2005

The 'obscene' salaries, pensions and perks of the Eurocrats

The figures, forced into the open by a Czech MEP have been published in this morning's Sunday Telegraph, linked here. Just look at this list of perks which apparently result in average after tax (what tax???) take home pay of seventy thousand pounds a year.

Brussels admitted to the following family staff perks:

• Household allowance: two per cent of basic salary plus £100 a month.

• Dependent child allowance: £185 a month per child.

• Pre-education allowance: £11 a month.

• School fees: reimbursement of up to £150 a month "doubled in certain cases".

Eurocrats are also eligible for other allowances:

• Expatriation allowance:

16 per cent of the total sum of basic salary, household allowance and dependent child allowance.

• Secretarial allowances of between £77 and £120 a month.

• "Various" allowances - among them standby duty, shiftwork, overtime, for which values were not given.

Bureaucrats who are posted outside Brussels and Luxembourg are also eligible for an allowance known as a "correction coefficient". It compensates officials posted to cities with a high cost of living and rounds down salaries where life is cheaper than in Brussels or Luxembourg.

As a result, expatriate officials posted to Britain are entitled to a further 42 per cent on top of their basic deal.

The perks don't stop there. At the end of their careers, pensioners can expect £3,681 a month for the rest of their lives - at a total cost to the taxpayer of £303 million last year.

What the article does not then make clear is the fact that those taxpayer funded grossly high pensions are not only tax free, but that tax authorities of the EU states in which they are paid are not even told, nor have any right to determine, the amounts actually being paid - so none can know whether the figures quoted as an average are correct or what the upper amounts might be for the senior officials who have manipulated past treaties to obtain these grotesque and secret perks for their own selfish benefits.